Wow! Lookie There...

"I have no special talent. I am only

passionately curious."

--Albert Einstein

"What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child."

--George Bernard Shaw

The New Guinea Singing Dog Makes a Comeback!

Last February, after an emergency vet trip for one of our dogs, Sam asked if dogs have a uvula (to see the post click here). We couldn't see down Poncho's throat (he's such an excitable dog!), so we did a little research and found that dogs do not have uvulae. Except the New Guinea Singing Dog, which has a uvula-like structure in the back of its soft palate. Well, lo and behold, we go to the San Diego Zoo and someone asks us if we want to take a picture with a singing dog! I was stunned! We excitedly asked if it was the New Guinea Singing Dog and began telling the uvula story. The trainer looked a bit surprised, and maybe a little like she was thinking, "Ah, the wackos have landed!" But yes, it was the NGSD!

Well, the story continues. Today we get ZOONOOZ Magazine in the mail and one of the featured articles is about the very dog we met! It's a small, small world!

Look Out Mars, Here We Come!

We've been learning about the planets. I was totally unaware that Sam and Grace were taking a trip to Mars. I walked into the kitchen, minding my own business, and found Sam rumaging through pots and pans. When I asked what he was doing, he informed me that he and Grace needed space helmets. "For what?" I asked. Because they couldn't breathe on Mars without space helmets, of course. Silly me! He couldn't see out of the pots, so we all came up with other ideas. Their trip to Mars was great fun! I almost missed it. Imagine how surprised I would have been it they just flew off in their space shuttle without any goodbyes?

Celery, Sunlight and Colored Water

This past week we discussed how plants make food using sunlight. We mixed food coloring into two jars of water. We placed celery into the jars and put one into a dark corner with a fan blowing on it for about 48 hours. The other we put into the sunshine for the same amount of time. Little did I know that it was a competition! That thought didn't even cross my mind, but apparently my children had noted which had mixed each color and placed celery into "their" jars. When we brought out the celery to be observed, Sam began whimpering that Gracie won. I was puzzled! I didn't know what he was talking about. I finally figured out that they each thought the blue was Gracie's because she mixed it and the red was Sam's because he mixed that color. The blue celery was thriving--it had been placed in the sunshine. The red celery was bedraggled and withered with barely any color to the leaves. Of course, it had been exposed to drying conditions and no light. The science of the whole thing was lost. Except for Gracie's delight in experimenting with using a magnifying glass--while she reveled in her victory over her big brother!